Who Is Mistral Dawn?

Mistral Dawn is a thirty-something gal who has lived on both coasts of the US but somehow never in the middle. She currently resides in the Southeast US with her kitty cats (please spay or neuter! :-)) where she works as a hospital drudge and attends graduate school. Taken By The Huntsman is her first effort at writing fiction and if it is well received she has ideas for several more novels and short-stories in this series. Please feel free to visit her on FaceBook or drop her a line at mistralkdawn@gmail.com

Friday, April 29, 2016

#SitDownShutUp


Hey Everyone!! :-)

My friend Kate is back again today with some more of her thoughts about life, the universe, and everything. ;-)  Enjoy! :-)

Kate:
When my boss screamed “Kate, he's running!” I didn't realize precisely who it was but I was out the front door of the building before I even remembered to ask. It didn't take me any time at all to spot him and I understood why I was the one chasing him instead of one of the other staff. He was big. And angry. He also was not terribly fast, which was a good thing because I wasn't going to be winning sprints anytime soon. He slid to a stop and looked back when I called his name but there was nothing on his face that told me he understood who I was. He ducked behind the wall of a building and I could immediately tell that he'd bit himself hard enough to draw blood as it dripped down the wall where his fists were plowing into the siding with enough force to turn my stomach.

I yelled his name repeatedly until he looked at me and then I talked. I talked and talked, I don't remember about what and I don't think it mattered. He screamed, a high pitched wail of rage and confusion before he started to cry. His six foot two frame shook with sobs, his hands bruised, the bite no longer bleeding but still visible on his calloused hands. He had stripped off most of his clothes during the ordeal and I did the only thing I could. I took off my jacket and approached him, wrapped it around him and moved him inside to a dark, quiet room. I grabbed a cup of hot coffee and wrapped him in a blanket as he dozed off in the chair.

My boss, of course, was mad. Why had I given him the blanket? Wasn't I just encouraging this behavior? We should immediately sit down and talk to him about consequences for this outburst (read: punishment for having a meltdown). I finally turned on her after about ten minutes or listening to her harass me and with barely controlled fury exclaimed:

“When he melts, do you suppose he knows what he is doing? Do you think he planned that? Perhaps he decided to bite himself so hard he bled because he didn't like your job task? There is a time and a place to have a discussion about consequences and, frankly, this isn't it. So back the fuck off!”

Her face went pale and I could tell in that moment she wanted to fire me or hit me but, in the end, she did nothing. She was a bully and she knew it and I knew it. She was in a lot of ways a good person and she desperately wanted to do the right thing by the people I worked with and she dearly loved them but she was unable, even for a moment, to make something NOT about herself.

This is a common problem and one that many, many people who would not consider themselves self-centered suffer from. There is a time and a place for things, there are moments when it is appropriate to voice your opinion and many more moments when it is not. You do not kick someone who is already broken, you do not berate someone who has already lost everything there is to lose, and you do not turn funerals, weddings, holidays or birthdays into a personal war zone just so that you can “have your say.” There is a time when humanity demands nothing more of us than to just shut up. Learning when those moments are is part of being a functional, caring, genuine adult. Not everything is about you and that's okay, help keep it that way by not being an ass.


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